Saturday, October 22, 2011

FULL
TEXT: St. Petersburg, July 20. – A real live ogress with a desperate desire for
flesh and blood, having a daughter similarly depraved and numerous cannibal
retainers, has just been seized at Kurdla [place not located, see note].

People
remarked that numerous men and women, decoyed to the house of Ivanova Tamarin
and her 17 year old daughter, Olga, were never seen returning. The discovery in
a neighboring wood of corpses, mutilated beyond recognition, led to the house being
surrounded by a force of gendarmes under Colonel Vassiteff.

~
GHASTLY EVIDENCE FOUND ~

Ivanova
and her daughter were secured after violent resistance, and a search of the
premises resulted in the discovery of 27 corpses in a storehouse, as well as a
great number of watches, purses and other articles of value, and a quantity of
male and female garments.

The
eating room of the house was furnished with a trap door, through which the
victims were precipitated into the cellar. In the cellar murderous instruments
and fetters of all sorts were found.

The
women confessed to being at the head of a band which, during recent months, had
robbed and murdered 40 people who had been decoyed to the house by Olga, and
mentioned thirty other peasants belonging to the band, who were also arrested,
while nine others escaped.

NOTE: “Kurdio” as a place name has not been identified. The word could be a reference to Kurdish ethnicity.

Previously, we considered the place name to identify a location in Estonia. The Russian names may or may not be good evidence of the proper location. They may be English transliterations of Russian transliterations from a different language.

Here is our original note arguing for an Estonian location: "Kurdio" is given as the place in this version in the San Francisco Call. The Los Angeles Times prints the same article, but with “Kurdla” instead of
”Kurdio.” “Kurla” presumably
identifies one of these two Estonian villages: Mägi-Kurdla, a village in
Laimjala Parish, Saare County in western Estonia; or Paju-Kurdla, a village in Laimjala Parish, Saare County in western
Estonia. A similar place name
in Estonia is: Kärdla, the largest town on the Estonian island of Hiiumaa
and the capital of Hiiu County.

Monday, October 17, 2011

There
are 24 known Cesarean Kidnapping cases, 25 if we include the institutional cases of
the 1976-1983 Argentinian “Dirty War.”

***

FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 4): Philadelphia – A West
Philadelphia woman has been charged with murdering the mother of an abandoned
infant girl. Police said Margaret Sweeney, 26, had been hacked and shot to
death, then buried in a shallow grave after giving birth to another baby by
Caesarean section.

Detectives said Winifred Ransom, 36, allegedly struck Mrs.
Sweeney at least 20 times with a hatchet and snot her three times. She is
charged with murder, conspiracy; possessing an instrument of crime and
recklessly endangering another person, police said.

Police had been searching for Mrs. Sweeney since Thursday,
when her 18-month old daughter Tammey was found abandoned in a station wagon in
north Philadelphia. Mrs. Sweeney’s two other children live with her father,
William Griffith, in Nesco, N.J.

A newborn baby was found upstairs in Mrs. Ransom’s home.
Police said Mrs. Ransom knocked Mrs. Sweeney unconscious while she was visiting
at the Ransom home. She performed a Caesarian section on Mrs. Sweeney,
apparently because she could have no children of her own and “wanted a baby
badly,” police said.

When the pregnant woman regained consciousness during the
operation, Mrs. Ransom struck her with the hatchet and fired the shots,
officers said. According to police, Mrs. Ransom then buried the dead woman
beneath the floor boards of her kitchen shed.

Police said they were alerted to the murder by Mrs. Ransom’s
common law husband, John, 40, Saturday afternoon. Detectives said they found
the body wrapped in a white sheet inside a plastic bag. A hatchet was also
found in the kitchen, they said.

FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 4): Winifred Ransom, 37, was
sentenced Thursday [Jul. 10] by Common Pleas Court Judge Juanita Kidd Stout to
an indeterminate term in the Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry.

Mrs. Ransom admitted performing the crude Caesarean section
on Margaret Sweeney, 26, of Philadelphia and killing her with a hatchet and two
shots in the head from a 32-caliber revolver. The premature baby survived and
lives with her grandfather, William Griffith of Nesco, N.J.

Psychologist Jan Grossman testified in the nonjury trial
that Mrs. Ransom was driven by a psychotic delusion triggered by her inability
to have children. As a result, she could not tell right from wrong, Dr.
Grossman said.

Mrs. Ransom’s common-law husband, John, testified that his
wife told him she bore the child herself and killed Mrs. Sweeney when “she
tried to take my baby.” Ransom, who said his conscience bothered him, went to
police three days later.

Police found the body last Nov. 16 buried behind the Ransom
home [error: it was under kitchen floor].

FULL
TEXT (article 3 of 4): Psychiatrists have recommended the release of a woman
who was committed to a mental hospital 17 months ago for killing a pregnant
woman and cutting out her baby.

The
district attorney’s office says it is powerless to prevent the hospital from
letting the woman go because she was acquitted — on grounds of insanity.

Winifred
Ransom, 38, who admitted at her trial that she shot and bludgeoned the woman
and removed the baby with a butcher knife, is no longer insane, doctors at
Byberry State Hospital said.

Margaret
Sweeney, 26, the woman Mrs. Ransom admitted killing, was eight months pregnant
at the time of the incident in November 1974. Her infant, a girl, survived and
is being raised by relatives. Mrs. Sweeney and her husband were estranged.

Mrs.
Ransom was acquitted in July 1975. Psychiatrists testified at her trial that
she was driven by a psychotic delusion caused by her inability to bear
children.

Last
month, Judge Stout received letters from Dr. Albert Solomon and Dr. Juan
Villazon of Byberry, recommending that Mrs. Ransom be released.

The
doctors said that Mrs. Ransom remains “schizophrenic” but no longer requires
in-patient treatment.

“If
you discharge her,” Judge Stout wrote in reply, “she is your responsibility and
not mine. I really cannot understand how, in all circumstances of this case,
you can recommend discharging Mrs. Ransom to go out into the community and
resume normal life.”

The
request for release was the third from the hospital. Five months after Mrs.
Ransom was committed, doctors asked that she be released for the Christmas
holidays in 1975 because her condition had improved considerably, according to
court records.

But
she had not been declared sane and both the judge and the Philadelphia district
attorney denied the request.

Two
months later, Dr. George Buck wrote that the woman was “in good condition” and
should be transferred to an out-patient facility.

The district attorney’s office also denied that request and
wrote that “due to the horrendous nature of the offense... this office
seriously questions the advisability of such a recommendation by hospital
officials at this early date “

Joseph
Murray, chief of the homicide unit of the district attorney’s office, said
Thursday that although he was personally “outraged” by the present situation,
the district attorney’s office had no power to prevent Mrs. Ransom’s release or
to further prosecute her since she has been acquitted of the murder charge.

Doctors
involved in the case have not been available for comment.

However,
Dr. Anthony Dunfield, a spokesman for Byberry, said “We’re concerned about
doing what’s ethically and legally proper. There are civil rights involved ...
You can’t lock up a healthy person forever and throw away the key “

FULL TEXT (Article 4 of 4): Philadelphia – A woman who
performed a caesarean with a butcher knife so that she could have a child of
her own has been released after serving 20 months in a state mental hospital.

A spokesman at Byberry State Hospital said Tuesday [Mar. 8,
1977] that doctors were required by law to release Winifred Ransom, 38, at her
request after they had determined she was no longer, insane.

Mrs. Ransom admitted shooting Margaret Sweeney to death in
November 1974, and using a butcher knife to remove the woman's baby. The baby
girl survived and is being raised by relatives.

Psychiatrists testified at Mrs. Ransom's 1975 trial that she
was psychotic, out of touch with reality and driven by a delusion related to
her inability to bear children.

The doctors said they expected her to be hospitalized for “a
long duration.”

But by last December, Dr. Albert Solomon, who was treating
Mrs. Ransom, the Byberry Superintendent Franklyn R. Clarke, said she had been cured
and could be released.

Since Mrs. Ransom was acquitted because of her mental
condition, she cannot face charges in the killing again.

Judge Juanita Kidd Stout, who presided at the trial in
Common Pleas Court, call the situation “Really a sad state of affairs.”

Dr.
Jan C. Grossman, the psychologist who came up with the questionable opinion on
Winifred Ransom’s non-culpability in this case in 1974 received his M.A. in
psychology from Temple University in 1970 and his Ph.D. in clinical
psychology from Temple in 1973. He received his Juris Doctorate from
Temple in 1990. He is still in practice (2014).

What if Women’s Studies courses used cases like this to try
to convince students that Marxian feminism was justified in its claims of
female moral superiority, female non-violence, and the benefits of sexual
liberation? What follows is the saga of single mother Laura Lugo and her
run-ins with several other unmarried, independent – and strong – women.

***

On
September 1, 1992 Paulyna and Rosa Botello lured Laura Lugo, 8 ½ months
pregnant, across the US/Mexican border to a clinic in Matamoros for what she believed
was going to be a routine prenatal exam. All three women were US citizens. Lugo
described how once she arrived at the Mexican clinic the doctors sedated her
and delivered the baby by Caesarean section against her will. When she awoke
she was told that Rosa Botello had taken the baby.

Rosa Botello had befriended
her while she was pregnant, steadily trying to persuade her to give the child
up for adoption after a sonogram revealed it was a boy. “I said, ‘No. Don’t
even think about it.’ I knew that I wanted the baby even more after I found out
it was a boy,” said Lugo, who already had three daughters.

The Bizarre Lugo
case was reported throughout the US, but newspapers made no mention of the baby
boy’s father.

Paulyna Botello’s lawyer in her first trial claimed Lugo had
volunteered to give up the child due to her financial problems. The story was
not believed by the jury. So in later court proceedings to wily Paulyna changed
her story and claimed that she herself was the mother of the contested baby.

It
would take over a year for Laura to get her son back from the kidnappers.
Paulyna Botello was arrested on October 24, 1992 in Mexico on a
child-trafficking charge, but the boy was put in the custody of Botello’s
relatives. Her sister in crime, Rosa eluded capture. Paulyna was tried for the
crime and on February 2, 1993 she was sentenced to three years in prison in
Mexico. Laura was still waiting to have her baby boy returned to her. But six
weeks later on March 25, 1993 the conviction was overturned based on trial
errors and the kidnapper was freed on bond and she fled to the US to avoid
retrial.

US officials were willing to arrest the fugitive based on a Mexican
extradition warrant, so on June 30, 1994, FBI agents in McAllen, Texas,
arrested Paulyna Botello for a second trial. The boy, who Paulyna Botello
claims is her natural child, was placed in foster care in Texas. Up to this
point Lugo has seen her son in only
three brief visits since he was born.

In a Texas court it was proven by DNA
tests that the contested child was indeed Lugo’s, so on October 7, 1994, mother
and child were finally reunited. Paulyna Botello is deported to Mexico. October
28, 1994. She would not be convicted until June 14 of the following year when
she was given a sentence of three years in prison but was allowed the
equivalent of a suspended sentence. Before this however, Laura Lugo’s story had
taken another dramatic turn.

On December 21, 1993, just eleven weeks after her
reunion with her kidnapped boy, Laura had disappeared. On June 4, 1995
unidentified bones were discovered in Brownsville. Police submitted the bones
for testing to determine whether they are Ms. Lugo’s remains. On September 29,
1995 police reported that first test results on unidentified skeleton are
inconclusive. The bones were submitted for further tests.

Investigation of Lugo’s
habits and movements led to the discovery of a “love triangle.” The police had their
suspect.

On September 10, 1999 Janet Ramirez was sentenced to 20 years in
prison for the murder of Lugo. Ramizerez, unmarried, who was having an affair
with a married man named Randall Ledbetter, with whom Razmirez had a child and
Lugo was likewise having an affair with him. Her vengeance against her
competitor for Ledbetter’s extramarital attentions manifested itself as she
posed as Lugo and made threatening calls to Ledbetter's wife. After she was
apprehended on suspicion of murdering Lugo, Ramirez claimed that Ledbetter
wanted Lugo dead because of the harassing calls and that he hired Roberto
Briseno to kill her. The jury did not believe her story and acquitted Ledbetter
and Briseno. Razmirez arranged a plea bargain and was sentence to 20 years in
prison.[Text by UHoM]

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Here is a sample of the sort of “first wives’ clubs” you
will find when you explore the collection of “Husband-Killing Syndicates.” Most
of these news accounts deal with Eastern European cases. Here is one from
Yugoslavia in 1926 called “The Lucretia Club.”

***

FULL TEXT: Belgrade,
Jugoslavia — A club of women poisoners under the guise of a charitable
organization with the significant name of “Lucretia” has been raided by the
police.

Police asserted that at
secret meetings the club members were taught the medieval art of mixing and
administering poisons. Six women who were unhappily married were declared thus
to have found means of ridding themselves of their husbands. The remains of
these were exhumed and in two cases toxicologists have found traces of poison.

Five women of the club
were charged with being the ringleaders of the organization and arrested.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

FULL
TEXT: London, Aug. 10. – A coroner’s jury today decided that Louis Fisher,
refrigerating engineer of the United States Shipping Board steamer, American
Trader, died from “natural causes” and that Mary Waite, 24-year old stewardess,
did not intend to do him “any previous harm” in pouring acid over him while he
slept.

Fisher
died aboard the American trader at sea last Friday and Miss Waite was arrested
when the vessel arrived here. Captain H. C. Fish, master of the American
trader, testified that Miss Waite had told him she threw acid on Fisher to
disfigure him because of his attention to other women and that she had no idea
of ending his life.

Miss
Waite later appeared in the Dow street police court and was discharged. She
will sail for the United States tomorrow under a deportation order.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

A woman in her late 30s and her two teenage sons, born in
1986 and 1989, whose names were not disclosed, were arrested in November 2005
in in the Rostov region town of Krasny Sulin, about 925 kilimeters south of
Moscow, charged with strangling a man and eating his internal organs. Regional
police spokesman Alexei Polyansky stated they strangled the local man during an
argument. Polyansky said the suspects were being questioned and would be sent
to a psychiatric clinic to undergo tests. [UHoM]

FULL TEXT: Hobarton, Tasmania –
Elizabeth Cahy, p.h., was charged with a “common assault” on Mrs. Elizabeth
Lewis on the 19th instant, by “then and there biting a portion of her right eye
brow off.”

The prisoner pleaded guilty, but
standing in her own defence.

Mrs. Lewis stated, that the prisoner
was in her service; at 10 o’clock on the night of the day mentioned, witness,
who keeps a public house, (the Freemason’s Arms) went to clear the Tap room,
when the prisoner prevented her; witness told her to go to her room, but she
refused, and rushed witness against a cask in her bar; she afterwards seized witness
by her hair, and pulled some of it out by the roots, and, then, bit a piece of
her eyebrow off.

A witness, named Margaret Davidson,
who was stopping at Mr. Lewis’ on the night in question, corroborated Mrs.
Lewis’s testimony, and stated, that the prisoner’s conduct was very violent,
and that Mrs. Lewis was bleeding profusely from theeye brow.

Dr Smart deposed to the nature of the
wound, which was about an inch in length, and half au inch broad; a portion of
the flesh had been torn off which Mrs. Lewis showed to witness: he sewed up the
wound which was not of a dangerous character.

Mr. Burgess said, that the Bench
adjudged the prisoner guilty; her conduct towards her mistress appeared most
brutish, and it was only in October 1854, that she received a sentence of nine
mouths’ imprisonment for a similar offence. She was now sentenced to eighteen
months’ imprisonment withhard labor.

FULL
TEXT: St. Petersburg, Nov. 11. – A most horrible story of cannibalism is
reported from Bessarabia. A woman named Akkerman, a giantess in stature and
strength, sought shelter at the house of a peasant woman named Yooreski
Sariera. The woman and the peasant drank considerable, and when the supply of
vodka gave out, Yooreski went out to get another bottle. She was gone quite a
little time.

When
she returned she was almost struck dumb with horror on finding that her guest in
her absence had killed her baby, gnawed the soft parts of its body and sucked
its blood and brains. The woman was then in the act of attempting to kill
another child, a girl, who was seeking to escape from the hut, screaming at the
top of her voice. The mother rushed in and tried to save her child from the
murderess, but the latter struck the little girl with a bludgeon and killed her
before her mother could reach her.

The
mother's brain was turned by the terrible scene, and she became a raving
maniac. She attempted to kill herself, but neighbors who had been attracted to
the scene by her wild shrieks prevented her.

The
Akkerman woman made a most desperate resistance to arrest. She fought like a
tigress, and some of the peasants weft quite severely injured. She was finally
overpowered and bound with ropes. Five men accompanied her to the jail.

The
news of the terrible crime spread rapidly, and a number of men tried to take
the prisoner from her guards to lynch her.

The
woman was locked up. It is not known whether she is insane or not.

[“A
Female Cannibal - Kills Two Children of Her Host and Partly Devours One of Them
The Mother Becomes a Having Maniac Peasants Attempt to Lynch the Murderess.” syndicated, The Pittsburg Dispatch (Pa.), Nov. 12, 1892, p. 7]

In 2008 31-year-old Czech mother Klara Mauerova tortured her
two sons, 8-year-old son Ondrej and Jakub, 10,over a period of six months. She stubbed cigarettes out on their bare
skin, whipped them with belts and tried to drown them. Eventually Klara decided
to slice off sections of Ondrej’s skin and forced him to eat it. Karla’s
sister, Katerina, helped her in executing the tortures. Other relatives, among
them Barbara Skrlova, partook of the human flesh Klara provided. After their
rescue from their single mom, the boys said they were kept in cages or
handcuffed to tables, sexually abused, forced to cut themselves with
knives,and made to stand for days in
their own urine.

Klara claimed the activities were not her fault and that she
had been brainwashed by Barbora Skrlova. She explained herself in vague terms
using the passive voice: “Terrible things have happened. I realize it and can’t
understand how I could have allowed it.” During the trial the defense claimed
that the abuses were coordinated via text messages sent by a leader of the
Grail Movement cult, of which the defendants were members— who was known only
as the “Doctor.”

The Czech Republic court in Brno sentenced the mother,
KlaraMauerova, to nine years in prison. Her sister Katerina given 10 years. Barbora Skrlova, 34, got five years. Three others who took
part in the abuse were also given jail terms: Hana Basova, 28, and Jan Skrla,
25, 7 years each; Jan Turek, 5 years. [UhoM]

On August 28, 2008 in Kabul Afghanistan Ms. Jabarkhel,
daughter of Hudkhel, aged about 40, was arrested for kidnapping from her home
and biting to death an 8-year-old girl named Marwa. The child, who lived in the
eighth precinct of Kabul had opened the gate of her home to give a handout to
Jabarkhel. Gen Alishah Paktiawal, chief of the criminal investigation division
of Kabul police told reporters that the woman took her victim to the tent in
which she lives and proceeded to bite her until the child died. Ms. Jabarkhel
had consumed one of her victim’s hands before being apprehended. No other
details were offered. Police said they considered the murderess to be mentally ill
and they had not yet determined whether she had killed any others. [UHoM]

[Source: Based on BBC translation of National Afghanistan
TV, Kabul, in Dari and Pashto 1530 gmt 5 Sep 08]

On November 3, 2009 a woman identified by police as “Sunday”
was arrested in Juba in Southern Sudan after she was found in a cemetery near
Konyo-Konyo market feasting on a corpse of a child. Police were tipped off by
an area resident and arrived to find found Sunday devouring the corpse with red
and green paper and onions. Yet she managed to outrun the officers discarding
the body as she fled. She was located as she was just about to snatch a little
boy.

Mark Tombe, the Criminal Investigation Department officer in
Malakia police post, told reporters that "The woman wanted … to get
another baby to eat but police could not give her that chance,"

It was learned that Sunday had recently given birth at Juba
Teaching Hospital, according to Dr John Lomoro. At that Sunday revealed to
hospitalstaff that she intended to eat
the newborn. She managed to drink blood (presumably from the umbilical chord)
before doctors arrived to take the baby from Sunday. The mother then ran off.

Lomoro continued that she wanted to eat her
baby but the doctors came in to rescue the girl. “She ended up drinking the
blood of the baby after delivering her,” Lomoro said.

The rescued baby girl was dubbed “Innocent” by her
benefactors. [UHoM]

Katherine Knight, who had a long history of violence behind her,is known for having murdered John Charles Thomas Price on February, 29,
2000 and cooking up his dismembered corpse for a ritual meal to be served to
her victim’s unwitting children.

Following is a long, but an excellent and well-researched Wikipedia
article:

Katherine Mary Knight
(born 24 October 1955) was the first Australian woman to be sentenced to life
imprisonment without parole. She was convicted of the murder of her partner,
John Charles Thomas Price (born 6 January 1955) in October 2001, and is
currently detained in Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre.

~ Family ~

Originally from
the town of Aberdeen in New South Wales’ Hunter Valley, Barbara Roughan (Née
Thorley) was forced to move to Moree after beginning a relationship with Ken
Knight, a co-worker of her husband Jack Roughan. The Roughan and Knight
families were both well known in the conservative rural town and the affair was
a major scandal. Two of Roughan’s four children remained with their father
while the two youngest were sent to live with an aunt in Sydney.

Katherine Knight
was the younger of twins born to Barbara and her de facto partner Ken on 24
October 1955 in Tenterfield, New South Wales. Jack Roughan died in 1959 and the
two children who had lived with him moved in with the Knight family. Barbara’s
grandmother was apparently an Indigenous Australian from the Moree area who had
married an Irishman. She was proud of this fact and liked to think of her own
family as Aboriginal. This was kept a family secret, as there was considerable
racism in the area at the time and this was a source of tension for the
children. Apart from her twin, the only person Knight was close to was her
uncle Oscar Knight who was a champion horseman. She was devastated when he
committed suicide in 1969 and continues to maintain that his ghost visits her.
The family moved back to Aberdeen the same year.

~ Early life ~

Knight’s father
Ken was an alcoholic who openly used violence and intimidation to rape her
mother up to ten times a day. Barbara in turn often told her daughters intimate
details of her sex life and how much she hated sex and men (Later, when Knight
complained to her mother that one of her partners wanted her to take part in a
sex act she didn’t want to do, Barbara told her to “put up with it and stop
complaining”). Knight claims she was frequently sexually abused by several
members of her family (though not by her father), which continued until she was
11. Although they have minor doubts about the details, psychiatrists accept her
claim as all her family members confirmed the abuse did happen.

Katherine was by
all accounts a pleasant girl who experienced uncontrollably murderous rages in
response to minor upsets. When she attended Muswellbrook high school, she
became a loner and is remembered by classmates as a bully who stood over
smaller children. She assaulted at least one boy at school with a weapon and
was once injured by a teacher who was found to have acted in self-defense. By
contrast, when not in a rage Knight was a model student and often earned awards
for her good behavior. On leaving school at 15, without having learned to read
or write, she gained employment as a cutter in a clothing factory. Twelve
months later she left to start what she referred to as her “dream job”, cutting
up offal at the local abattoir from where she was quickly promoted to boning
and given her own set of butcher knives. At home she hung the knives over her
bed so that they “would always be handy if I needed them”, a habit she
continued - until her incarceration - everywhere she lived.

~ David Kellett ~

Katherine first
met hard drinking co-worker David Stanford Kellettin 1973 and
completely dominated him, if Kellett got into a fight at the hotel Knight would
step in and back him up with her fists without fail. In Aberdeen she was
renowned for offering armed combat to anyone who upset her.

Knight married
Kellett in 1974, at her request, with the couple arriving at the service on her
motorcycle with a very intoxicated Kellett on the pillion. As soon as they
arrived Knight’s mother Barbara gave Kellett some advice:

“The old girl
said to me to watch out. ‘You better watch this one or she’ll fucking kill you.
Stir her up the wrong way or do the wrong thing and you’re fucked, don’t ever
think of playing up on her, she’ll fuckin’ kill you.’ And that was her mother
talking! She told me she’s got something loose, She’s got a screw loose
somewhere.”

On their wedding
night she tried to strangle him. Knight explained it was because he fell asleep
after only having intercourse three times.

The marriage was
particularly violent and on one occasion a heavily pregnant Knight burned all
Kellet’s clothing and shoes before hitting him across the back of the head with
a frying pan, simply because he had arrived home late from a darts competition
after making the finals. In fear for his life, Kellet fled before collapsing in
a neighbors house and he was later treated for a badly fractured skull. Police
wanted to charge her but Knight was now on her best behaviour and talked Kellet
into dropping the charges. In May 1976, shortly after the birth of their first
child, Melissa Ann, Kellett left her for another woman and moved to Queensland,
apparently unable to cope with Knight’s possessive, violent behavior. The next
day Knight was seen pushing her new baby in a pram down the main street,
violently throwing the pram from side to side. Knight was admitted to St Elmo’s
Hospital in Tamworth where she was diagnosed with postnatal depression and
spent several weeks recovering. After being released, Knight placed two month
old Melissa on a railway line shortly before the train was due, then stole an
axe, went into town and threatened to kill several people. A man known in the
district as “Old Ted”, who was foraging near the railway line, found and
rescued Melissa, by all accounts only minutes before the train passed. Knight
was arrested and again taken to St Elmo’s Hospital but, apparently recovered,
signed herself out the following day.

A few days later
Knight slashed the face of a woman with one of her knives and demanded she
drive her to Queensland to find Kellett. The woman escaped after they stopped
at a service station but by the time police arrived Knight had taken a little
boy hostage and was threatening him with the knife. She was disarmed when
police attacked her with brooms and she was admitted to the Morisset
Psychiatric Hospital. Knight told the nurses she had intended to kill the
mechanic at the service station because he had repaired Kellett’s car, which
had allowed him to leave, and then kill both her husband and his mother when
she arrived in Queensland. When police informed Kellett of the incident he left
his girlfriend and along with his mother, they both moved to Aberdeen to
support her.

Knight was
released on 9 August 1976 into the care of her mother-in-law and along with
Kellett, they now moved to Woodridge, a suburb of Brisbane, where she obtained
a job at the Dinmore meatworks in nearby Ipswich. On 6 March 1980, they had
another daughter, Natasha Maree. In 1984 Knight left Kellett and moved in,
first with her parents in Aberdeen, then to a rented house in nearby
Muswellbrook. Although she returned to work at the abattoir, she injured her
back the following year and went on a disability pension. No longer needing to
rent accommodation close to her work the government gave her a Housing
Commission house in Aberdeen.

~ David Saunders ~

Knight met
38-year-old miner David Saunders in 1986. A few months later he moved in with
her and her two daughters although he kept his old apartment in Scone. Knight
soon became jealous regarding what he did when she was not around and would
often throw him out. He would move back to his apartment in Scone and then she
would invariably follow and beg him to return. In May 1987 she cut the throat
of his two-month-old dingo pup in front of him for no more reason than as an
example of what would happen if he ever had an affair before going on to knock
him unconscious with a frying pan. In June 1988 she gave birth to her third
daughter Sarah, which prompted Saunders to put a deposit on a house, which
Knight paid off when her workers’ compensation came through in 1989. Knight
decorated the house throughout with animal skins, skulls, horns, rusty animal
traps, leather jackets, old boots, machetes, rakes and pitchforks. No space,
including the ceilings, was left uncovered. After an argument where she hit
Saunders in the face with an iron before stabbing him in the stomach with a
pair of scissors, he moved back to Scone, but when he later returned home found
she had cut up all his clothes. Saunders took long service leave and went into
hiding. Knight tried to find him but no one admitted to knowing where he was.
Several months later he returned to see his daughter and found that Knight had
gone to the police and told them she was afraid of him. They issued her with an
Apprehended Violence Order (AVO) against him.

~ John Chillingworth ~

In 1990 Knight
became pregnant by a 43-year-old former abattoir co-worker, John Chillingworth
and gave birth the following year to a boy they named Eric. Their relationship
lasted three years before she left him for a man she had been having an affair
with for some time, John Price.

~ John Price ~

John “Pricey”
Price was the father of three children when Knight had an affair with him.
Reputedly a “terrific bloke” liked by everyone who knew him, his own marriage
had ended in 1988. While his two-year-old daughter had remained with his former
wife, the two older children lived with him. Price was well aware of Knight’s
violent reputation and she moved into his house in 1995. His children liked
her, he was making a lot of money working in the local mines and, apart from
violent arguments, at first “life was a bunch of roses”.

In 1998 they had
a fight over Price’s refusal to marry her and in retaliation Knight videotaped
items he had stolen from work and sent the tape to his boss. Although the items
were out of date medical kits that he had scavenged from the company rubbish
tip, Price was fired from the job he had held for 17 years. That same day he
kicked her out and she returned to her own home while news of what she had done
spread through the town.

A few months
later Price restarted the relationship although he now refused to allow her to
move in with him. The fighting became even more frequent and most of his
friends would no longer have anything to do with him while they remained
together.

~ Price’s Murder ~

In February 2000,
a series of assaults on Price culminated with Knight stabbing Price in the
chest. Finally fed up, he kicked her out of his house. On 29 February he
stopped at the Scone Magistrate’s Court on his way to work and took out a
restraining order to keep her away from both him and his children. That
afternoon Price told his co-workers that if he did not come to work the next
day, it would be because Knight had killed him. They pleaded with him not to go
home but he told them that he believed she would kill his children if he did
not. Price arrived home to find that Knight, although not there herself, had
sent the children away for a sleep-over at a friend’s house. He then spent the
evening with his neighbors before going to bed at 11pm. Earlier that day,
Knight had bought new black lingerie and had videotaped all her children while
making comments which have since been interpreted as a crude will. Knight later
arrived at Price’s house while he was sleeping and sat watching TV for a few
minutes before having a shower. She then woke Price and they had sex after
which he fell asleep.

At 6am the next
morning the neighbor became concerned that Price’s car was still in the
driveway and when Price did not arrive at work, his employer sent a worker to
see what was wrong. Both the neighbor and worker tried knocking on Price’s
bedroom window to wake him but after noticing blood on the front door alerted
the police who arrived at 8am. Breaking down the back door police found his
body with Knight comatose from taking a large number of pills. She had stabbed
Price with a butcher’s knife while he was sleeping. According to the blood
evidence, he awoke and tried to turn the light on before attempting to escape
while Knight chased him through the house, he managed to open the front door
and get outside but either stumbled back inside or was dragged back into the
hallway where he finally died after bleeding out. Later, Knight went into
Aberdeen and withdrew $1,000 from Price’s ATM account. Price’s autopsy revealed
that he had been stabbed at least 37 times, in both the front and back of his
body with many of the wounds extending into vital organs. Several hours after
Price had died, Knight skinned him and hung the skin from a meat hook on the
architrave of a door to the lounge room. She then decapitated him and cooked
parts of his body, serving up the meat with baked potato, pumpkin, zucchini,
cabbage, yellow squash and gravy in two settings at the dinner table, along
with notes beside each plate, each having the name of one of Price’s children
on it; she was preparing to serve his body parts to his children. A third meal
was thrown on the back lawn for unknown reasons and it is speculated Knight had
attempted to eat it but could not and this has been put forward in support of
her claim that she has no memory of the crime. Price’s head was found in a pot
with vegetables. The pot was still warm, estimated to be at between 40 and 50
degrees Celsius, indicating that the cooking had taken place in the early
morning. Sometime later Knight arranged the body with the left arm draped over
an empty 1.25 litre soft drink bottle with the legs crossed. This was claimed
in court to be an act of defilement demonstrating Knight’s contempt for Price.
Knight had left a hand written note on top of a photograph of Price. Blood
stained and covered with small pieces of flesh the note read.

Time got you back
Johathon for rapping [raping] my douter [daughter]. You to Beck [Price’s
daughter] for Ross — for Little John [his son]. Now play with little Johns Dick
John Price. (sic)

The accusations
in the note were found to be groundless.

~ Trial ~

Knight’s initial
offer to plead guilty to manslaughter was rejected and she was arraigned on 2
February 2001 on the charge of murdering Price, to which she entered a plea of
not guilty. Her trial was initially fixed for 23 July 2001 but was adjourned
due to her counsel’s illness and it was re-fixed for 15 October 2001.

When the trial
commenced, Justice Barry O’Keefe offered the 60 jury prospects the option of
being excused due to the nature of the photographic evidence which five
accepted. When the witness list was read out to the prospects several more also
dropped out after which the jury was empanelled. Knight’s attorneys then spoke
to the judge who adjourned to the following day; the next morning, Knight
changed her plea to guilty, and the jury was dismissed. It was now made public
that Justice O’Keefe had been advised of the plea change the day before. He had
adjourned the trial and then ordered a psychiatric assessment overnight to
determine if Knight understood the consequences of a guilty plea and was fit to
make such a plea. Knight’s legal team had planned to defend Knight by claiming
amnesia and dissociation, a claim supported by most psychiatrists although they
did consider her sane.

No reason has
ever been given for the guilty plea, and despite giving it, Knight still
refused to accept responsibility for her actions. At the sentencing hearing,
Knight’s lawyers requested that Knight be excused to avoid hearing some of the
facts, but the application was refused. When Dr. Timothy Lyons took the stand and
described the skinning and decapitation, Knight became hysterical and had to be
sedated.

On 8 November,
Justice O’Keefe pointed out that the nature of the crime and Knight’s lack of
remorse required a severe penalty; he sentenced her to death sentence, refused
to fix a non-parole period and ordered that her papers be marked “never to be
released”, the first time that this had been imposed on a woman in Australian
history.

In June 2006,
Knight appealed the life sentence, claiming that a penalty of life in jail
without possibility of parole was too severe for the killing. Justices Peter
McClellan, Michael Adams and Megan Latham dismissed the appeal in the NSW Court
of Criminal Appeal in September, with Justice McClellan writing in his
judgement “This was an appalling crime, almost beyond contemplation in a
civilized society.”

“Nothing tastes as good as the man I married. It’s the sauce
that does it.” – Omaima Aree Nelson

***

Based on Wikipedia:
Omaima Aree Nelson is an Egyptian-born nanny and model who was convicted
of murdering her husband, Bill Nelson. She is serving a life sentence at the
Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, California. Her case made
international headlines due to allegations of bondage sex, decapitation,
castration, and cannibalism.

Omaima Aree Nelson was born and raised in Egypt, and
immigrated to the United States in 1986. She, then 23, met her husband Bill
Nelson, a 56 year-old pilot, in October 1991; the couple married within days of
meeting. Omaima would later claim that during the couple’s month-long union,
she suffered sexual abuse by her husband.

On Thanksgiving Day 1991 (November 28), as Omaima claimed
after her apprehension, that Bill had sexually assaulted her in their Costa
Mesa, California apartment. Following this, as Omaima explained, she stabbed
Bill with scissors, then began beating him with a clothes iron. After he was
dead, she began dismembering his body, and allegedly cooked his head and
boiling his hands to remove his fingerprints. She then mixed up his body parts
with leftover Thanksgiving turkey and disposed of the mixture in a trash can.
She reportedly castrated him in revenge for what she described as sexual
assaults.

Bill Nelson's head was decapitated and cooked. His severed
hands were fried in cooking oil. 80 pounds of him were never recovered.

Omaima was arrested on a suspicion of murder charge in
December 2, 1991, and her trial began almost exactly one year later on December
1, 1992. She was convicted of second-degree murder on January 12, 1993. She was
sentenced to 28 years to life in prison.

Deputy Disttrict Attorney Randolph J. Pawloski told jurors Nelson was a "predator"
who planned to flee the area with his car, cash and credit cards after the
grisly slaying. During the investigation, it was revealed that Nelson tied up
and demanded money at gun point from Robert
Hannson of Huntington Beach in November 1990. Pawloski argued this was
part of a pattern of Omaima using her looks to seduce men and then turning
violent once alone with them to get what she really wanted. This culminated in
her shackling her husband to a bed during what he believed to be sex-play.
Instead, she murdered him with a pair of scissors and an iron and then began
dismembering him.

Neighbors said it seemed as if the garbage disposal in the
Nelson unit ran non-stop for two days.

The psychiatrist testified at trial [that] in his over 20
years of experience Mrs. Nelsons mental state was the most psychotic he had
ever seen.

Omaima first became eligible for parole in 2006, but was
denied when “commissioners found her unpredictable and a serious threat to
public safety.” She became eligible again in 2011, but was denied by the parole
board again, citing that she had not taken responsibility for the murder, and
would not be a productive citizen if she were freed.

The parole Board cited reports that while in prison she
“continuously engaged in the habit of having relationships, including conjugal
visits, with older men while incarcerated for financial gain.”

She will not be able to seek parole again until 2026.

Omaima Nelson has been compared to fictional serial killer
and cannibal Hannibal Lecter, from Silence of the Lambs. Her case has
been televised on the Investigation Discovery programs Happily Never After
and Deadly Women.

On March 5, 2009, Siberian cannibal murderess Olesya
Mostovschikova, 27, had been drinking with her friend Tatiana Romanchuk when
they began to argue. Olesya attacked the woman with an axe. With the assistance
of her friend Julia, 32, Olesya, carved up the body.

The murderess gave a candid confession to police:

“I took the axe and hit her a number of times on her
head. Then I cut off her ears, gouged out one eye, cut off an arm, and a
hand. I took the hand, arm and eye and cooked these body parts in the
oven. Some time later, I went down to the cellar again because Julia [an
otherwise unidentified friend claiming to have gone along out of fear for her
own life] said that she was hungry and wanted to eat some more. We sliced
off some more meat and took it upstairs to the kitchen. We fried it on the
cooker and ate it.”

A seven-year-old boy witnessed the carnage.

First the women cut sliced flesh from the victim's buttock,
breast and a cheek. She went on to describe how, with the help of a friend
named only as Julia, she hid the victim’s body in the cellar of her Siberian
home. Afterwards Olesya stated shewent
down to the cellar again because Julia said that she was hungry and wanted to
eat some more: “We sliced off some more meat and took it upstairs to the
kitchen. We fried it on the cooker and ate it.”

Julia reported that she felt compelled to ask for the meat
because Mostovschikova had threatened to kill and eat her too. The next
day Mostovschikova sliced up the victim's body again, putting her legs in a
trash dumpster near her home and buried other body partsin her yard.The crime was uncovered when a neighbor discovered human legs in the
dumpster and called police.

“In 1981, Anna Zimmerman from Monchengladbach, Germany,
murdered her lover and cut him into manageable, pan-sized steaks. After saving
them in the freezer along with an ear and his penis, she fed him to her two
children, ages six and four – as she had previously done with family pets.”

FULL TEXT: At Croydon, on May 2nd,
Ann Bennett, a middle-aged woman, whoso eyes were dreadfully discoloured, was charged
with assaulting Emma Lock by biting her on the face and hand. Lock, an elderly
woman, stated that Bennett lodged in her son’s house in Leighton-street. She
was taking tea with her son and his wife, when Bennett entered the room.
Witness’s son resented the intrusion, and asked the woman to leave, whereupon
she dealt him a violent blow in the mouth, making it bleed. She then, hit
witness on the face, causing blood to spurt over the table from her nose and
mouth. She also pulled her down on the floor, knelt on her chest, and bit her
face and “tore all the flesh off her knuckles with her teeth.” “Witness really
believed she would have been bitten to pieces had not her son interfered. Two
months’ hard labour was the sentence.

Wikipedia: Many
recent studies feature the Mangbetu as a historically cannibalistic people.
According to Mangbetu men interviewed in the documentary Spirits of
Defiance: The Mangbetu People of Zaire it appears that many Mangbetu
currently believe their ancestors to have practiced cannibalism. David Lewis
asserts that a "wave of flesh-eating that spread from inveterate cannibals
like Bakusa to Batetela, the Mangbetu, and much of the Zande" resulted
from ongoing political disorder caused by Swahili raids in the 1880s.